


Ghost Island

by Eolivet



Category: Survivor RPF
Genre: M/M, Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-14 20:02:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14143491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eolivet/pseuds/Eolivet
Summary: The game turned on a twist, and the flick of a wrist and a spark and smoke and fire.Or the "Adam loses Survivor" AU that nobody asked for.





	Ghost Island

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: None of this is real, not at all, not even a little bit.
> 
> A/N:  
> Literally all of the Internet: Hey, Eolivet -- Millennials vs. Gen X was over a year ago, haven't you moved on yet?  
> Me: Hey, Internet -- they literally went on an 18-day vacation together in December, so.

It rained all day, and the wind tossed the boat back and forth, so several contestants were puking over the side by the time they reached the island. It rained all night and it dampened the flint and the kindling and the tiny pieces of wood. Prune-like fingers gripped a knife, and crusty magnesium skittered off the blade alongside the raindrops.

The game turned on a twist. A twist in the wind.

From his place on the jury where he was seated across from them, Jay kept his eyes on his knees that were bumping together and rubbed his arms to generate heat. It was the only heat anyone was generating.

When he dared to look up, Adam was staring at something above his head. Adam’s hands kept working, back and forth with the knife, back and forth to toss shavings in the air. 

His gaze moved from the air to Jay and back to the air, and Jay couldn’t catch the silent signal. He shrugged and mouthed something, but Adam’s attention was back on his knife. David’s hands were working too, only … faster.

The game turned on a twist, and the flick of a wrist and a spark and smoke and fire. 

Then it put the rest of them back into the boat and shook them all up, but this time there was nothing in their stomachs left to empty.

*

Adam spent only one night at Ponderosa. He left wet shoe prints in the kitchen, started several conversations and abandoned all of them. Then he chugged one and a half beers, turned a putrid shade of green and ran outside in the wind and the rain to puke them up.

Jay heard the door bang against the side of the house and followed Adam. The faint outline of his body was doubled over, a ghost-white hand splayed against the dingy white siding.

Wiping his mouth, he raised his head and Jay couldn’t tell if the water painting his cheeks was rain or tears. With the hint of a nod, he turned and went back inside.

A few minutes or an hour or several hours later – time didn’t exist on the island, they didn’t have phones – Adam appeared at the door to his room. His hair was plastered to his head, water dripped from his shirt and shorts and down his arms, legs and face, and his lip was quivering.

Jay should’ve known he’d follow him. He was the only one who knew the green tinge to Adam’s skin and the redness in his eyes wasn’t just about fire in a rainstorm.

Adam walked slowly, carefully to the bed and sat down, his expression listless and glazed over. He said nothing.

One gingerly touch of his back, and Adam’s shoulders began to shake. One cautious arm around his shoulder and the tears flowed freely.

Jay was stone-cold sober, but his memory was fuzzy after that. A door closing. His shirt damp with Adam’s tears. Hands grabbing at his face, touching his eyes, his cheeks, his mouth. Echoes of heaving sobs. A soft fist hitting his chest.

Bits of broken nonsense like “I can’t be here” and “they had a helicopter,” which sounded like remnants of beer talking. 

Shoulders slumping forward. Sobs fading into quiet snoring. Weight on his chest. An aching back and a flattened pillow.

He closed his eyes for one second, and there was banging on the door. Someone was yelling “the helicopter is here.” Adam and his fantasy helicopter wormed their way into his sleeping brain. He’d slipped into accelerated dream-time. One moment, something was crushing his chest, and the next he could breathe again. Then he dreamed something else.

Soft like a breath, a gentle breeze over his lips. Light, sure contact pressing against them.

When he woke up the next morning, Adam was gone, and nobody knew where he went. Everyone wore identical quizzical expressions and turned-down puzzled mouths. “Oh yeah, what happened to him?” – like they’d all had the same dream. Jay couldn’t find the empty beer bottles, and any evidence Adam got sick outside was washed away by the rain, blown away by the wind.

He wanted to ask about the helicopter, but he didn’t know what to ask. “Dude, was there a helicopter here last night?” They’d think he was high. Wouldn’t it have blown the roof off their tiny Ponderosa house?

But the top corner of the thin bedspread on his bed was damp to the touch.

*

Jessica asked a producer about Adam the next day when they were herding them back onto the boat, mud-sand filling their shoes as they walked to the dock.

“He’s fine,” the producer – Kate, Katie, Caty – said, as if Jessica’s question had been, “Did you slit his throat and toss his body out of your stealth helicopter after filling his shoes with mud-sand?”

Jay wanted to ask the producer something else, but a warning rattled in his head: _I will never forgive you and I will never speak to you again._

The sky was gray, the air was close, final tribal council was the biggest waste of time since trying to make fire in a rainstorm, and nobody mentioned Adam’s name after that.

*

Only when he got home did he begin to suspect something had changed. Jay didn’t believe in magic or anything, but he found himself missing pieces. Microscopic aches that flared up occasionally when his mind would wander back to rain and wind and a weight on his chest time hadn’t entirely lifted.

Adam was a parable, a fable, a story told among those who remembered, with memory as the only assurance he was real. Except he didn’t tell Adam’s story, because he was the only one who knew, and it wasn’t his story to tell. The real threat of never being spoken to again still rang in his ears, even if it came from a ghost.

After a month, Jay began to wonder if Adam had existed at all. He didn’t post in any of the usual cyber-spots. There were no blips of videos of him wearing a dog nose or cat ears. No photos of fixed smiles and loosely draped arms around his cast mates.

Maybe Adam was some island-induced fever dream – a manifestation of homesickness and worry and the invisible thread that tied him to his own mother. Adam was his imaginary friend, appearing at night for long talks and in unnoticed snatches of daylight.

But every so often, Jay would wake up short of breath, with pain blossoming in his chest.

Then Adam started sending him poetry.

*

The direct message was sandwiched in between a few rows of smiley-faced heart emojis from intrepid Survivor fans who’d done their casting research and staked out the corresponding social media accounts months ahead of time. Women and men clamoring for his attention, and one who just assumed he’d had it.

_Tossed and turned at night, do you remember_

Jay stared at the message for a minute or an hour or several hours – he’d slipped back into island time. The message claimed to be from Adam’s Instagram account, but it didn’t sound like Adam at all, or no version of Adam he’d ever met. But how likely it would be that some troll would hack into Adam’s account and send him obscure poetry?

He didn’t respond. _Yes? No? I have no idea what you’re talking about?_ Instead, he closed out of the message, tossed and turned in his bed and tried not to laugh at the irony.

The next day, a second one arrived.

_The leaf blew down and all I could see was water and wind and_

He studied this one, trying to pick clues from the bare-boned words. Water and wind were easy enough, that was the cyclone. But what was the leaf … the shelter roof? Why was Adam talking about things that happened the first night they were there?

Thumbs at the ready, he prepared to send a blistering reply of “ _wtf are u on_ ” when there was another message from Adam that sounded like it was written by a human and not a troll poet. It said, “ _Hi Jay_ ,” mentioned that he was in Australia and that he hoped Jay was having a good summer.

That was it. No reference to that whack poetry he’d sent for two days. Nothing about the show or their time together. It was as if Adam was a fan who stumbled onto his Instagram, and not someone who’d lived and breathed and cried the entire experience with him.

Jay wrote back that Australia sounded fun and his summer was good, and he hoped Adam was good and having fun and good. Adam had gone from his imaginary friend to his pen pal.

When the next message sat bolded brightly in his Instagram, he assumed it’d be more of the same sanitized garbage. _“Did you know Australia is so different from the U.S. because—”_ or _“Did you know Australia’s not that different from the U.S. because—”_ followed by some trite vacation-isms about kangaroos or wallabies or all humans living under the same big freaking sky.

_I sit on the beaches and lie in the green fields to think of you_

“dude wtf is wrong with u the poetry was bad enough but this is deep shit man like love poetry idgi”

Was not what he wrote back:

_You ok?_

The response awaited him the next morning, and Jay’s fingers hovered over the message. His breath hitched from the phantom weight still crushing his chest. He breathed out a memory of sweet breeze ghosting across his lips. The one he was sure he dreamed.

_I’ll tell you when I see you._

“see me lmao im not flying to Australia or sf or wherever. U only knew me for 2 months.”

But that wasn’t what he wrote either.

*

Adam’s family had a house in Lake Tahoe, three and a half hours away from the San Francisco airport. Buses connected to trains in Sacramento, or trains connected to buses in Reno. Renting a car would cost too much.

Cobbling together enough cash for the ticket meant scraping up his share of every folded dollar and grubby cent from the bar’s tip jar and dipping into the savings account he kept in reserve for his mom’s house. And that was with changing planes once in Chicago, once in Denver. Ten hours on a flight was halfway back to Fiji.

But it was only money. Jay would pick up extra shifts, freelance modeling jobs, sell a few more houses.

His Uber driver, Danni, introduced herself with, “I carry a gun, just so we’re clear.” She was forty in her eyes, fifty in her face – all harsh laugh lines and sunken-in cheeks. Her hair was smoke and ash, dark black that faded to a light gray ponytail. She drove a light blue Camry with pockets of rust above the wheels that narrowed to streaks before exploding into smears of peeled off paint. When she wasn’t an Uber driver, there were about even odds she was selling meth.

The car bumped along the roads, jostling his earbuds out. His cheek pressed against the cool glass of the window, and his mind wandered away from the lush green of the forest and the dead, dry brown of the desert.

“You ever been to Lake Tahoe?”

His eyes blinked open, and he pried his tingling cheek away from the glass. “Nope. Gonna visit …”

_My imaginary friend, who appeared to me in the shadows of Fiji. My Insta pen pal, who writes deep, symbolic love poetry. The guy who slept on my stomach and stole my breath in a dream and lured me here to return it._

“Someone special?” Danni prodded him.

His thoughts shifted, redrawing the boundaries on whatever this was. He’d emptied his bank account to buy a ticket, flew ten hours and cheerfully climbed into a meth dealer’s car. All on a cryptic invitation over Instagram.

Because he had to find the parts of himself he’d lost in Fiji, the parts that broke off when Adam left him in a dream. The jagged, exposed edges that jutted up and pierced his chest and made it hard to breathe. It was like his bones had been fused together with Adam’s while they slept, and his hadn’t quite healed after they were broken apart from each other.

Instead, he leaned back in his seat and pulled down his shades. “Something like that.”

*

As the meth-head car wound its way up the enormous driveway that more closely resembled a long street, the wooden facade and enormous glass doors of the modern mansion came into view, inch by inch, like the feathered canopy of pine trees were parting to reveal them.

He was so entranced by the picture windows and the sliver of a deck that sloped gracefully to the side that he jumped when Danni cleared her throat and said, “Hope you enjoy your time with your someone special.”

Jay thanked her with a plastered-on smile, shouldered his duffel and beat a hasty retreat from the meth-car, listening as its wheezing motor chugged back down the driveway and the sound faded into the overcast gray sky.

“I’m out back,” came a voice somewhere behind him, hoarse and strained.

The wind whipped up, and he held his hoodie around him like a cloak as he started down a brick walkway towards the large glass door at the front. The red brick road snaked around the side of the house, past several more enormous pine trees until it ended in an even greener backyard with a few patches of brown that resembled scorch marks.

Adam was seated on a chair on the deck, eyes fixed towards the cluster of pine trees lining the back of the yard. His fingers fiddled with a thin stick that poked into his leg. Only when it snapped apart with a crack, both halves falling to his feet, did Jay notice the small pile of sticks in front of him.

Jay’s feet were frozen to the well-manicured lawn. The splintered parts of himself that broke away that windy, rainy night began to repair themselves. His chest expanded when he let out an easy breath, and his duffel bag slipped from his fingers, flattening the grass beneath his feet.

Then Adam turned to face him. If Danni had sunken eyes, Adam’s were red-tinged pits on his face. His skin was sallow and pale. He was a ghost of who he was on the island, but exactly who he was the night he was whisked out of Jay’s dreams in a helicopter.

Jay’s mouth was dry as he spoke. “Don’t let me stop you,” he said, trying to contain his nervous tittering.

But Adam’s expression smoothed out, color creeping back into his cheeks. His lips fought their way into a smile, even if it was only for Jay’s benefit.

“You’re here,” Adam said.

In that instant, Jay’s empty bank account and the ten-hour flight and the meth-car ride was worth every dollar and cent he’d scrounged and saved and stolen.

“Yeah.” A flush traveled up his neck as he glanced into the expansive backyard. Leaning against a tree was a half-opened box with that unmistakable rope design. There was heavier rope in knots to support a person or a couple of people’s weight, and wooden slats to keep it from twisting too badly.

Jay grinned. “Hey, you got a hammock.”

“Yeah.” Adam’s voice scratched over the word. “Tried to put it up, then … “ He made a vague motion with his hand and shrugged.

The wind blew an irritable gust into his face, and Jay pulled his hoodie tighter around himself. 

“Well, I’ll help you – it’s easier with two people. Remember like we put it together on the—“

“I have a better idea.” Adam’s words snapped through the wind, like the sticks he’d been breaking. His eyes flashed a warning. “Let’s build a fire.”

Jay’s stomach dropped, glancing at the tidy pile of sticks gathered at Adam’s feet. “You got a fireplace in there?”

Adam grabbed a newspaper from … somewhere. He unfolded it, then removed a large sheet from the center. It crumpled in his hand, as quiet as a hail of bullets.

“So, where’s your family at?” Jay asked when Adam placed the crumpled paper on the brick walkway.

His shoulders flinched when he bent to gather the sticks. “They’re back in San Francisco, so it’s just us,” he said. “Sorry if that’s disappointing.” He addressed the sticks more than Jay, stacking them into a neat structure surrounding the crumpled paper.

Jay’s pulse throbbed in his fingertips when he slid a hand through his hair, pushing off imaginary raindrops.

“Hey, you wanna show me around your house? We can make a fire when it gets dark.”

Adam reordered some of the taller sticks with a fixed, manic smile. “There.”

Jay bounced on the balls of his feet, wondering when someone had stuck hot coals underneath them. His mouth moved to form a warning or a plea or a sigh that faded into the surrounding trees when Adam withdrew a flint from one pocket of his shorts and a large Swiss army knife from the other.

The blade glinted in the dying afternoon light as it scraped across the top and magnesium snow sprinkled onto the lawn, the falling ash of a nuclear blast.

“Adam …” Jay finally said.

“It’s not that difficult once you get the hang of it.” Angry blue veins peeked through the translucent white of Adam’s knuckles, his tone light and conversational.

“Stop.”

“No, really – I’ve gotten pretty good.” The knife caught the sun, a sliver of exploding light. “Did you know …” Gray shavings colored his two fingers that gripped the flint underneath. “They sell flints online. You can buy a whole box. That’s probably what they did for the show.”

“You don’t need to do this …” The words were hollow, meaningless, but Jay couldn’t keep them bottled up. “All right? You don’t gotta prove nothing to me.”

The knife kept whirring back and forth, back and forth, a human-powered band saw throwing sparks into the air until the newsprint finally ignited. Adam’s shoulders sagged in triumph or relief.

“I know,” he said.

His eyes were trained on the small fire at his feet. As he talked, he continued to feed sticks into it.

“The storm delayed the helicopter from getting to the airport. It landed at 2:37 at night. Or somewhere around then – that’s when they gave me back my phone.” He twirled one stick between his fingers before placing it in the middle of the pile. “But the flight didn’t take off for another hour because there was too much wind.” His lips turned up in a grimace. “It wasn’t like it was a cyclone. You know, it was just … wind.”

Adam stroked the end of a shorter stick, its blunt point pushing into the pad of his finger hard enough to leave a ghost of a mark.

“Anyway, uh …” He scratched his nose, then flinched at the stick he still held scraping across his skin. “I got home, and— my mom …” He took a breath. “Uh … I missed her by about an hour.” His smile was sharp. “It was … probably while I was just getting off the flight.”

Pricks of pain radiated from Jay’s chest and arms, and all the cracked fragments of himself threatened to poke through his body. A tiny explosion burst from the fire, sparks shooting out across the lawn and at Adam and at Jay.

“Fuck,” Jay said.

Adam placed the last stick and folded his arms as the glow of firelight licked at his face. Finally, he found Jay’s gaze with weary eyes. “So, that’s not really something you share over Instagram.” He indicated the flames at his feet. “But at least now I can make fire.”

That pricking pain slowly sharpened into a twisting ache. If the last month had been a weight flattening his chest, Adam must’ve been living in traction.

Jay wanted to stomp all over the fire, so that it singed the hair on his legs until blossoms of pink sprung up. He wanted to grab Adam and smash him to his chest, melding them back together to heal whatever had broken off that night.

Instead, he cast a look over at the backyard, jerking his head in the direction of the hammock. “Come on. Whaddya say we put that up?”

*

On the island, weaving together a few palm fronds for the roof was the total of Adam’s building of the shelter, but he was an enthusiastic participant here. Jay had put up a few hammocks on a few trees near a few beaches, enough to disregard the tissue paper-thin instruction sheet that fluttered out of the box.

Adam located an ideal spot beneath the canopy of pine trees. It was close enough to the house, so it didn’t require a map to get there, but not so far into the woods that bugs would be constant companions.

When Adam brushed against him to pick up the other side of the hammock, Jay wrinkled his nose. Adam smelled earthy and … familiar. A kind of woodsy perfume that didn’t smell like the woods, but when he rifled through his list of catalogued smells from the island and elsewhere, Jay drew a blank.

He pulled the ropes taut and knotted them around the trees, one after the other. Shrugging off his hoodie, he flopped down into the hammock when he was done with a satisfied sigh.

“I forgot how nice these are.” Jay’s legs and arms relaxed, a steady stream of tension flowing out that was absorbed by the ropes supporting him.

It shifted beneath him as Adam clambered in beside him until six inches of space was all that separated them. “I missed this,” Adam said, closing his eyes with a drawn-out breath. “It could use a pillow, though.”

“Why don’t you go get one from your house?”

“Well, then I’d have to move,” Adam said, with a goofy grin and a pitched laugh that made the hair stand up on Jay’s arms.

He tried to push it out of his mind, as the late afternoon breeze rocked them back and forth. Jay’s eyes grew heavier. His ten-hour flight had caught up with him. But the smell he couldn’t place kept jolting him awake. Pungent, woodsy, spicy and … smoke. But not from the fire.

Jay sat up, a hand flying out to steady himself, so he wouldn’t pitch Adam onto the grass. He blinked, because he was wrong. Adam moved to a sitting position beside him, eyes wide and glassy, and Jay wished he was dreaming.

The smell. The red-tinged eyes. The pale, sallow skin.

“Dude, are you high?” Jay asked, his voice almost cracking.

Adam laughed again, and Jay flinched.

“So what if I am? Don’t tell me that’s a problem, Jay.”

Jay kept his eyes on the trees overhead as he laid back down. “No, man, it’s fine,” he lied. “I’m not gonna pretend like I’ve never smoked up. I just didn’t think that you did.”

Adam laid down next to him, still chuckling at nothing that was at all funny. “I missed final tribal council because I couldn’t make fire, and my mom died an hour before I got home.” He withdrew another joint from his pocket, the ends piercing his fingers just like the stick had. “This just … makes me feel good.”

“Yeah, but …”

The rest of his argument evaporated into the rapidly chilling air. He couldn’t argue with that. He’d be face-down in a bottle of tequila on a boat set adrift into the Atlantic if what happened to Adam happened to him.

He turned his head partially in Adam’s direction. “So, you gonna spark that one with flint or what?”

Adam’s shrill, not quite sober laughter rang off the trees. “I should try that sometime,” he said, reaching into his shorts pocket. Just like the stick and the joint, he held the lighter in between two fingers. “Commemorative Survivor lighter. I got it on eBay. Fifteen bucks.”

“They didn’t give you one for free?”

“You know, they really should have.” Adam’s words muffled around the joint in between his teeth, as he flicked the lighter with too-practiced ease. His first drag was a deep, long surfacing-out-of-the-water breath. Jay wondered how many days Adam spent fighting to stay afloat.

He extended the joint to Jay, who’d have taken it from anyone else to be polite. Pot was a social courtesy offered by friends at parties. Smoking up was a group event, a passing of one bottle where you all took a sip.

“Nah, I’m cool.”

Jay forced his lips into a casual smile, ignoring the desperation in Adam’s red-rimmed eyes. Adam returned an impish, teenage grin.

“Come on, it’s not like we’re not gonna get caught.”

Jay opened his mouth to protest, and Adam cupped his face, their foreheads smashing together as he exhaled a billowy quantity of smoke into Jay’s mouth. His lips touched Adam’s lips, and the ache in his chest dulled. He wished he could say it was only due to shotgunning the joint.

“You had a long flight,” Adam said, drawing back. His cheeks bloomed as red as the corners of his eyes.

Adam handed him the joint, and Jay turned on his side. The tip blazed a fiery orange, the pain in his chest vanished and he reached through the puffs of haze to grab at Adam’s face.

That woodsy, pungent, floral cloud filled Jay’s lungs, creeping into his veins, wispy tendrils weaving up to his brain. One smoky finger reached out to switch his inhibitions off.

*

Goosebumps appeared on his arms, the shudder of cold stifled by the warm colorful smokiness coursing through his body. Facing each other, he rubbed a slow pattern into Adam’s arm. Back and forth, back and forth, they swayed with the hammock.

The joint had dwindled to a stub and Adam placed it back between his lips. He pulled away when he took a drag, and the ache in Jay’s chest flared up. His knees touched Adam’s knees and his grip on Adam’s arm tightened.

Then Adam stroked a hand down his face, the tips of their lips touched and the ache in Jay’s chest soothed as he breathed him in.

“You know this shit messes with your head.” Jay’s lips moved against Adam’s as he spoke, little bursts of heat warming his face.

Adam laughed into his mouth, and it rumbled against Jay’s chest:

“I hear it’ll give you lung cancer.”

Every breath Jay drew was sweet and unencumbered, the pieces of himself fused back together with smoke and fire. “So, I had this dream, right?” he said, bumping against Adam’s mouth. “I dreamed …” He paused to allow a steady stream of giggling, his own mixed with Adam’s. “There was a helicopter and it landed” –he tugged at Adam’s shirt sleeve, knocking their foreheads together— “on top of the Ponderosa house, and then you … then you …”

He pursed his lips and blew out a soft breath before they ghosted over Adam’s in that same phantom kiss.

Adam gave him a half-lidded, fuzzy gaze, and the thinnest hint of a smile. He moved over Jay, hot breath congealing on his lips.

“You can’t land a helicopter on top of a house,” he said, half-laughing as he leaned in. “It’d take the roof off.”

Jay clutched the back of Adam’s shirt, noses bumping together. “Well, maybe it did.”

“And you’d get—”

A fat drop of water splattered onto Adam’s cheek, followed by one landing on Jay’s arm. Then one fell on his nose and his wrist, and his back was pelted with droplets. He craned his neck and more splashed down into his eyes.

The overcast sky darkened to gray with a smattering of green – Adam’s exact complexion that night at Ponderosa.

Every dot of rain congealed on Adam’s face, painting him with water spots. He ran his finger down Adam’s cheek, the droplet clinging to his fingertip as he slipped it into his mouth and sucked it off. It was squirmy and watery on his tongue, and the taste broke through the pleasant pot fog.

“We should go inside,” Jay said, his voice tinny and wavy through the storm.

“Why? It’s just rain.”

Adam grasped both sides of Jay’s face, maneuvering back onto his side and pulling Jay into his eye line. Rain streamed down his cheeks, unmixed with tears, Jay hoped. Adam blinked, and water clung to his eyelashes, sprinkled across his eyes.

“I taste really good,” he said. He ran the flat of his tongue across Jay’s closed lips. “You taste really good.”

Jay licked rain syrup off Adam’s lips. A droplet slid from Adam’s nose, soaking into the neck of Adam’s shirt.

“Taste better than you,” Jay said.

Adam leaned in, and there was that light, sure contact against his lips. It wasn’t a dream, and Jay’s insides were buzzing.

“God, yes,” Adam said on a breath, before his mouth covered Jay’s.

*

“Did you—” Jay panted out, head thrown back.

Adam’s syncopated breath was a moist cloud on his neck. He spoke in choked out sex-fragments. “Did— what—”

Rain smothered the fire and darkness blanketed the silent sky, silent but for a slippery grip that brought them intimately together. Skin on skin, this-skin on this-skin, in sexual sign language. Thicker than a joint, slicker than a stick and other things that slid in and out of Adam’s fingers today.

“—kiss me,” Jay said, his mind back in Ponderosa, back when Adam breaking him apart was painful, not pleasure-filled. “Did you—”

But Adam misunderstood him, bringing their mouths together with the taste of stale-sweet pot rain until Jay surrendered to the sound of their squelching skin.

*

Darkness tucked them in when Jay finally nodded off. However many hours later, a cramp zinged through his lower back, prying his eyes open with a groan. He ran a hand over his face, fingers tracing over his eyes, nose, mouth, chin as inventory.

Pieces of memory flitted down with the last remaining raindrops. His back melded to the damp ropes of the hammock. A frigid breeze seeped through his drenched shirt and shuddered throughout his half-naked skin.

But he wasn’t cold. He was … covered.

His chest froze up, then relaxed at the microbursts of warm air from Adam’s soft snoring. Adam’s head was tucked under Jay’s collarbone, his shirt equally wet and he was equally naked below the waist.

Jay drew in a sober breath, expelling it as a yelp.

Adam raised his head, with a sleepy, sated gaze. “Go back to sleep.” Then he lay back down, more squarely on Jay’s chest, his voice in that state between awake and asleep.

He was back in that house, on that island, only this time there was no imaginary helicopter. This time there was nothing to break apart. He and Adam were fused back together, and all his empty spaces had healed.

“It’s all right,” Jay said, closing his eyes. “It was just a dream.”

*

He awoke to the faint smell of grease, the scratch of wool and his head perfectly cushioned. He rolled over, exhaling a loud groan into a soft pillow. His fingers curled around a thin afghan that conjured up elderly women knitting. Did Adam tell him he had a grandmother?

He lifted his head and the hammock jerked with his every move. He was alone, but he wasn’t alone. A faint blurry vision of Adam with billowy white bags in each hand was heading towards him.

Adam set the bags on the red, yellow and orange blanket, and then scrambled to grab them when his weight on the hammock nearly topped Jay and the bags onto the ground.

“Hungry? I got us some breakfast,” Adam said, with wet hair and clean clothes and smelling of deodorant. His eyes were clear.

Jay stayed frozen under the blanket, naked from the waist down when Adam slipped underneath it.

“You wanna eat inside?”

“Why?” Adam removed one Styrofoam container and balanced it on his lap. He opened the lid and removed a slice of bacon. “You see, this is our day thirty-nine breakfast. If … it was a final seven or something – I didn’t know what you liked, so I just ordered everything.”

“Coffee?”

He paused while chewing – a small piece of bacon sticking to the side of his mouth. “I didn’t get any. I— forgot you liked it.”

He swallowed down that he’d never told Adam he liked coffee. “Dude, it’s cool. I’ll just go inside and make some—”

“Actually …” Adam gripped his arm. “You can’t.”

Jay raised his eyebrows. “You don’t have a coffee maker?”

“Well, my parents and I don’t drink it, and my brother only likes iced coffee.”

Adam picked up another piece of bacon. His chewing seemed slower, more morose now.

“Dude, it’s okay,” Jay said. “Hey – relax.” He plucked an orange slice from Adam’s container of bacon and eggs, placing it between his teeth.

Adam’s lips turned up, just like the orange rind. Jay crossed his legs under the blanket, scooting away from where his bare leg was touching Adam’s. Daylight cast a sobering shadow on their world, even filtered through the canopy of trees.

*

Borrowing Adam’s clothes felt too much like “drop your buffs.” Different laundry didn’t transform someone’s personality as much as it highlighted certain aspects that had been hiding in shadow. One buff was more sociable, another more competitive, a third more emotional.

But Jay had no choice. His duffel had sat out in the rain and all the clothes he brought were soaked through.

Adam’s athletic shirt and baggy athletic shorts became a tight muscle-defining outfit on Jay’s body with their different builds. But on the bike trail nobody seemed to care. He’d followed Adam, wheeling Adam’s brother’s bike up the dusty dirt path behind him.

“Would you look at that view. Isn’t it amazing?” Adam said over his shoulder, clear eyed and pink cheeked.

Jay nodded, flexing out the mesh covering his fingers. Adam’s brother’s biking gloves were too small for him, so Adam brought out his dad’s gloves, which were a better fit.

“You ever been biking?” Adam said.

“Well, in high school, my buddies and I rode our dirt bikes around the skate park—” He shut his mouth because that was not what Adam was asking. Then he indicated his ensemble, then launched into an exaggerated accent: “But, no, I’ve nev-er comp-eted in le Tour de Frahnce.”

The color flared in Adam’s cheeks. “Well, it’s really not like that,” he said, glancing at the ground. “But I still think you’ll love it.”

Jay adjusted his shorts and flexed his fingers around the handlebars. “Yeah? Me, too,” he half-lied, and Adam beamed at him, brighter than the sun.

*

The door to the outside banged shut, and Adam ran ahead of him, flopping down into the hammock. It bowed under his weight, swaying back and forth. Jay plopped down next to him – letting out a long, extended breath, all flaccid arms and spaghetti legs.

“Yeah, I think I’ll skip the Tour de France,” he said, wiping his brow.

They’d biked along the dirt trail in single file, with Adam leading because he knew the way. Adam hadn’t spoken to him much all afternoon except for the occasional “you okay?” and “I’m gonna stop up ahead” tossed over his shoulder. In public, he spoke a language Jay didn’t understand – the “summering in Lake Tahoe” tourist.

But here in their hammock, Adam’s teeth gleamed white in the sunlight, and the glow in his cheeks wasn’t from sweat alone.

“Don’t you love it up here?” He pointed to the canopy of trees. “Just always clears my head.”

Their uncomfortable afternoon vanished into more comfortable closeness, as Jay turned towards Adam to soak in his euphoria. His exhilarated heart ping-ponged a rhythm in his chest.

Then Adam pulled a joint out of thin air, and Jay’s enthusiasm flickered.

“What?” Adam said. He placed the joint between his teeth and produced the Survivor lighter that must’ve been his constant companion.

Jay directed his attention back towards the sky. He flinched at the flick of the lighter, the smoke already creeping into his nostrils.

“Hey, we biked like, three miles today. I think we deserve it.” Adam exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Come on, don’t be such a square.”

A burst of suppressed laughter bubbled out of Jay’s cheeks, escaping in a “pffft” sound. Adam took another drag and deliberately blew a ring of smoke in his face.

“A square? What are you, sixty?”

“Yeah. Daddy-O.” Adam smirked at his own joke, then offered Jay the joint.

Jay held it between his fingers, studying the way the smoke curled upwards, the tight roll of the paper. Adam never did anything halfway. If he was smoking up, he’d have a PhD in joint rolling.

“God, you’re a tool,” Jay said, placing the joint between his lips and inhaling. It entered his lungs, swirling around and that pleasant ethereal haze began settling over them. It loosened the weight that started to form back over his chest – a weight comprised of somebody else’s clothes and bike and gloves and expectations.

He handed the joint back to Adam, and their fingers brushed together. Adam took another drag and slid closer, and their shoulders touched.

*

“You wrote—” Jay said, words sloppy against Adam’s mouth. “—this poetry.” His hand tangled in Adam’s hair. His chest was no longer being crushed, but something was crushed against his leg.

Adam cradled his face between his hands, eyes red-rimmed and serious. “I’ll write you a sonnet,” he said. He licked at Jay’s mouth down to his chin. “You taste … so good. So good …”

Jay tilted his chin up. Adam’s lips were on his neck, and his hand was creeping up Jay’s shirt. He shook off the drowsy hedonism and attempted another sentence.

“You— you wrote to me, and you … you …”

His shirt was hitched up under his arms, Adam pressed wet kisses to his chest and stomach, and Jay let the words go, unfinished and unimportant. He sucked in labored breaths and his borrowed shorts slid down around his ankles while the hammock rocked back and forth underneath them.

*

For the second time in two days, Jay opened his eyes to darkness, and a literal weight on his chest.

Consciousness returned more readily this time – perhaps this batch hadn’t been as potent, or he’d inhaled less of it or his tolerance was higher. Or the rain and the wind left his mind cloudy last night, when tonight it couldn’t be clearer.

His shorts were pulled down and the elastic waistband was tugging his ankles together. Adam was snoring, face down on Jay’s stomach, very _in flagrante delicto_. His hands were curled around Jay’s thighs, and—

“What the hell?” Jay said, and Adam’s head jerked up. Jay began the long scramble out of the hammock – catching his elbow in rope, kneeing Adam in the chin and rolling over twice so that the hammock would dump him onto the ground.

The borrowed shorts shrank in the however many hours since they’d been pulled down. He yanked them back up, ignoring the stickiness on his chest and down his legs.

Adam sat up, blinking and rubbing his head. He’d managed to escape from this debacle fully-clothed.

“What just …?” Jay began, grabbing at his hair to wake himself up from another dream. “What did we …? Did— did we just …”

With a yawn, Adam laid back in the hammock. “Yeah. What’s the problem? We did the same thing last night.”

“Uh, no,” Jay said. “No, no – that was not the same, that was … I wasn’t …” The distinction between a handjob and a blowjob wasn’t much, but right now it seemed especially important.

Jay pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead to stem the post-high comedown throbbing through his temples.

“Yeah, okay. So what – you like dudes now? Are you like, gay or something? I mean, it’s cool, but you never said nothing, so …”

“Why do you have to put a label on it?” Adam said. “Can’t we just … enjoy it for what it is?”

“Enjoy it?” Jay trampled the lawn as he paced back and forth, in the opposite direction of the hammock. “Dude, I can barely remember it. It’s like the pot makes me go into this … sex trance or something.”

“But doesn’t it feel good?”

Jay froze.

Adam’s silhouette was just visible, and his gaze was tangible. Heated skin and warm mouths and broken sighs flooded Jay’s mind. Their happy hammock-bubble, the one place where he could breathe and heal.

Where they could heal each other.

His will weakened, along with his knees. “Yeah, but… it’s just the pot. Isn’t it?”

“But it feels right. So, does it really matter?”

Adam the troll poet had returned from his long sojourn in Australia. He pulled at the balled-up afghan covering his feet, drawing down a corner and rubbing at an empty space where Jay could join him.

Moonlight painted an outline of Adam’s body onto the ropes. Jay’s legs were numb, and the canopy of trees hid most of the light.

He hesitated for as long as it took to find Adam’s eyes in the dark, and he carefully climbed back in beside him. Adam leaned his head on Jay’s shoulder.

Pot had already switched off his inhibitions, and he surrendered what remained of his rational mind. His lips relaxed into a drowsy smile.

“I guess this beats sleeping on the sand.”

Adam pulled the blanket up over their shoulders, wrapping them securely together. Jay couldn’t escape even if he wanted to.

“I sleep better with you,” Adam said, with a yawn. “I always have.”

His arms tightened around Jay, warm and constricting, and Jay surrendered to the heat and the closeness and Adam’s slow breath against his chest as the hammock rocked them out of consciousness.

*

As he slept, wood sprites from the canopy of pine trees above stitched his limbs into the ropes of the hammock. In the morning, he exhausted himself trying to lift his legs to stand, while pot smoke-colored pink and green spots swam in front of his face.

Adam was sitting on the deck, building another fire on the lawn, surrounded by those same billowy white plastic bags. The sunlight helpfully illuminated all the burned-out patches from his previous attempts. He counted at least ten. How many endless days had Adam passed alone, building fires and getting high before Jay arrived?

He leaned against the tree, losing himself in the shiny glint of the knife, the grit-grit-grit of magnesium speckles dotting the grass, and that first glorious spark.

“So, you wanna get tree mail while I tend to that?” Jay asked.

Adam’s face lit up, bright as the newspaper he lit. He stoked the flames with a few sticks. His eyes were clear and blue.

“Well, I’m not sure we have rice, but I have something else you might like better.”

Jay tensed at the thought of pot for breakfast, but Adam reached into the bag and pulled out a cardboard tray that held four cups of coffee, including one iced.

“I didn’t know what you drank – regular, decaf, mocha, iced – so I just got them all.”

“Sweet. After this, I’ll cut down all these trees with my teeth and build us a log cabin.” He bared them at Adam with a growl, and Adam’s laughter carried on the morning breeze.

The plastic bag rustled when Adam withdrew five more containers. “I couldn’t remember what you liked yesterday, so I just got everything again.” He opened one container, fork in hand. “If you tell me what you want, I can order it for you tomorrow.”

That familiar weight on Jay’s chest started to return with the mention of _tomorrow_. He grabbed a coffee from the tray next to Adam’s lap. One small sip burned his lips and tongue, and he bit back a curse.

“I’m gonna go back to …” he said, turning away from Adam and his breakfast buffet. The fire was smoldering into ashes at their feet, plumes of smoke still soaring off into the sky when he stepped around it and wandered back to the hammock. It swayed back and forth while he settled in, pulling up the blanket around him and nursing his too-hot coffee.

When Jay tried to breathe, the weight he’d carried off the island and back home, the weight he’d lugged around for months, was back to crushing him – choking off his breath. Why think about _tomorrow_ when there was _now_ and _here_?

The hammock dipped with familiar weight when Adam crawled over him. He nearly elbowed Jay in the face and Jay winced when Adam’s knee slammed into his shin in the process of arranging himself. The commotion bumped Jay’s coffee, but the plastic lid kept the coffee from spilling.

There was that same six inches of space between them when Adam finally settled in. He didn’t try to touch Jay or get closer to him. They were back in the middle of nowhere, somewhere they’d never left.

He removed a joint from his pocket, prodding it between his fingers.

Jay smirked, but his breathing came easier. “Breakfast of champions.”

Pot as breakfast for today was far more palatable than any talk of _tomorrow_.

Wind rustled through the trees, and Adam kept twirling the joint, his magic eight ball with all the answers.

“So, is this a recent thing?” Jay said, staring at the trees hanging over him. He turned towards Adam, the weight tightening around his chest.

Adam turned the joint turned over in his hand. “I was at a Survivor party in Australia with all these people from Australian Survivor,” he said. “Of course, nobody knew who I was ‘cause our season hasn’t aired yet.”

His lips turned up. “Anyway, someone had pot and was offering it to everyone. And you know, all I could hear was my mom’s voice, telling me when I was in third grade that I should never do drugs because they were bad for me, and I could get in big trouble.” He snorted laughter through his nose. “And then I thought, ‘well, my mom is dead, so I guess I can’t get in trouble anymore.’”

Adam continued to laugh in a steady, nervous stream, and Jay remained silent. His mother was his invisible conscience, just Adam’s mother had been for him. How many times had his mother’s patented disapproving look stopped him from questionable choices?

The lighter appeared, and Adam managed not to set himself or Jay on fire. “How ‘bout you?”

“What about me?”

“Well, unless two days ago was the first time you tried it,” Adam said, taking a drag and exhaling smoke into Jay’s face.

A memory started playing, with a sweetness that turned up Jay’s lips. “No, it was … at my sister’s thirteenth birthday party.”

Adam’s laughter was low and gentle, and mostly sober. “Get outta town.”

“Yeah, it was … one of her friends brought a joint – said she smuggled it off her brother. They were in the kitchen, and my mom had gone to get the cake. I come in and Melanie’s holding it, like it’s some science experiment, and there’s all this smoke, going up in my mom’s kitchen. Well, I knew she’d freak, so I grabbed it out of my sister’s hand and just ran out the back. I had to get rid of it before my mom got home, so … I just smoked it myself. All of it.”

He breathed in the memory, and the smoke surrounding them. Chuckling, Adam handed it to him. “Dang,” he said, drawing the word out. “So, what happened?”

“Well, when my mom came home with the cake, I just started shoveling handfuls of it into my mouth to get the taste out and then puked it all up in the backyard.” He took a hit, smiling at the candy-coated images of his mom and sister, in another life, on the other side of the world. “After that I learned … it’s better if you share it.”

He passed it back to Adam, who leaned on his shoulder while hammock continued its steady rocking. Adam smoked in silence for a long moment.

“Have you ever … watched something bad happen to you, but at the same time, it didn’t feel like it was actually happening to you?” Adam said. “Like you were watching it happen from outside yourself?”

Jay blinked back a phantom helicopter and another memory began unspooling in its place. Luke Robson at all of thirteen, freckles and braces, and that blur of a yellow dirt bike, faster and faster and faster, round and around and around the skate park. It tossed him off, a bucking yellow bronco, and the crash and crack and the bike a bent and twisted mess against a tree. Blood pouring out of the side of Luke’s zombie movie of a head where surely his brains must’ve been hanging out. Someone who sounded like a younger version of Jay was screaming, “oh my god, he’s dead, he’s totally dead, isn’t he?” – thick bravado to cover his own small, frightened voice.

“For the past two months, I’ve done nothing but watch things happen to me,” Adam continued, interrupting the memory. “This is the first thing I’ve done since my mom died that was entirely my decision. And I have to say … it feels pretty good.”

Jay reached down through the haze to nestle his coffee cup into the grass. It tipped over, darkening and dampening the lawn that surrounded them.

“Feels good to rot your brain,” he said, carelessly – plucking the joint from Adam’s lips. This hit was a deeper breath. The ache in his chest disappeared.

“Feels better if you share it,” Adam said, stealing the joint back only to toss it onto the coffee-soaked lawn. He turned on his side, sliding his leg against Jay’s. “Isn’t that right?”

Jay tasted smoke and flint and bacon on Adam’s tongue, and his hand tangled in Adam’s clean, wet hair.

*

Slipping back into the role of unwashed castaway was easier than he thought. He didn’t shower, ate very little, and stayed in the hammock all day and night. He hadn’t talked to his mom or his sister in days. His phone was most certainly dead. He hadn’t seen that in days either.

Jay lived on cold coffee, scavenging soggy toast and one mushy strawberry from the Styrofoam containers with congealed dew drops sliding off the lids. The containers still held their abandoned breakfasts from several days ago.

“I think we have rice in the kitchen,” Adam said, his head on Jay’s chest. Time had evaporated into the trees, and Adam’s hair still smelled clean. Or like pot. Just like on the island, scents and smells twisted and blended together until everything smelled the same.

“I thought there was no rice in the kitchen.”

Adam hovered over him, eyes red-rimmed and bright.

“Oh, you’re right …” he said, adding, "God, you're smart," before he leaned over to stop Jay from talking.

They marked each other with stubble burns. Skin rubbed raw with smatterings of pink that sprung up on Jay’s neck and stomach and thighs.

Days and nights blended into sweat and pot and sex. They were back on another deserted island, under a canopy of trees and nowhere near an ocean. And he still spent half the time stripping off shorts someone else had chosen for him.

Little black vines of mildew ran up Jay’s duffel, and the stench kept them both away from any rescue mission. Everything in there was ruined, and Jay couldn’t bring himself to care.

“You have any idea” —Adam licked at his neck, his leg curled around Jay’s hip— “how you look in my clothes?”

He reached for Adam through the smoky haze, his words muffled through the dwindling joint clenched between his teeth: “They’re my clothes now.”

One hand traced down Adam’s side, stroking at his thigh. Jay turned his head to spit the roach out and Adam was already lifting Jay’s shirt with his next instruction:

“Well, in that case … take off your clothes.”

Sex was a blur of hands and mouths and skin. He would giggle about Instagram poetry and phantom kisses at Ponderosa, and Adam would suck verse into his neck, and trail patterns of real, wet kisses over every inch of his body.

The high would slough itself off when satisfaction overtook them, and Jay would fall asleep, melded to Adam, their bones fused together, broken parts reassembled. Every morning and afternoon and evening that he woke up and Adam was there, he erased a little more of the hollow morning he’d awakened in Ponderosa, empty and alone.

“I never told … anyone,” he panted out, his body supple and willing under Adam’s touch. Hot breath painted his neck, a moan echoing up into the trees.

“I know you didn’t,” Adam said, biting at the soft flesh near his shoulder. “You never… would—”

Even the hammock molded to the shape of their bodies together. Occasionally, one of them would get up to relieve themselves in the woods or rarer still, venture into the abandoned house to take advantage of the indoor plumbing. The other would stay in the hammock, guarding its mystical pot and sex den powers until they could both take advantage of each other.

“You’re breaking my brain,” Jay said, taking a hit and blowing smoke into Adam’s face before dissolving into cackling. He’d meant the pot, but words were discombobulated in his mind, and sentences were a stretch.

Adam grabbed his cheeks, running his fingers across Jay’s eyes. His pupils were pinpricks in the light. “You’re healing my heart.”

Jay responded by flinging the joint over the side of the hammock and pressing a series of sloppy kisses on Adam’s mouth and chin. He lifted Adam’s shirt off and continued licking down his stomach to lavish attention on no part of Adam’s body that resembled his heart or his brain at all.

*

Every morning, just after dawn, Adam made a fire. He made a fire in a different part of the lawn, using that same pocket knife, a different flint, another sheet of newspaper and a few more sticks. It burned for maybe five minutes before the hammock would dip with his weight and he would curl back up under their blanket, on their shared pillow.

“Why do you do that?” Jay asked one morning, gravelly and still a bit high, when Adam’s breath warmed his shoulder.

“Do what?”

“The fire. Is it some … Survivor tribute thing?”

“No.” Adam’s laughter was light, his breath a damp cloud on Jay’s neck. “I thought it would help me get over it, but …” His voice shifted, weighted with something important. “Can I tell you something?”

When Jay said nothing, Adam continued:

“I hate Survivor.”

Jay’s low laughter echoed into his skin. “Come on, you don’t mean that – you’re like the biggest fan ever.”

“Yeah, I was.” Adam turned in his arms, tucking his head under Jay’s chin. His greasy, pot-smelling sex hair still smelled clean. “But in two days, I lost my mom, and my chance at winning. I didn’t get to tell anyone else about what happened or why I left. They probably think I was medically evacuated or something.”

It was easier to nod than to say that other than being confused about Adam disappearing in the middle of the night, he’d dropped out of the conversation. An amusing anecdote about “whatever happened to him,” in between laughter and reminiscing on the plane ride home.

“I was so sure that Survivor was where I was supposed to be,” Adam continued. He lifted his head from Jay’s chest. His gaze intent, his hand gently caressed Jay’s greasy hair. “And … maybe it was. But not for the reasons I thought.”

Jay rubbed his lips together. Adam had poked their happy pot-sex bubble with a stick and tossed up some unnecessary attachment embers from the small, dying fires he made every morning.

“You’re delirious,” Jay said. “You need to eat something. Wait right there, I’ll go get you some cereal—”

“I have a better idea. Why don’t we go out?”

Swallowing, the weight crept over his chest, and he took a small, gasping breath.

“No, I have a better idea …” he said, swinging a leg over to straddle Adam’s hips, to lean over and lick at this unnecessary conversation until it dissolved on his tongue.

Instead, Adam leaned up to capture his lips in a firm, insistent kiss before moving away.

“I’m serious,” he said. “Let’s get cleaned up and go to breakfast. A real breakfast with eggs and bacon – and, and coffee, and then we can go for a walk. There are so many beautiful hiking trails I haven’t shown you yet.”

He pulled out a joint from nowhere, and Jay held his breath that he’d recovered his senses. They needed to stay on their island, in their hammock, where they fit together. 

“You know … I thought I needed this to feel good.” Adam turned towards Jay, shyness coloring his cheeks. “But I don’t think I do anymore.”

“What does that mean?” Jay said, just in case it didn’t mean that he was now solely responsible for Adam staying clean.

Lying on his side, Adam slid closer to him. “It means …”

The joint fell from his fingers, landing somewhere in the grass.

“I’m starving,” Adam said, sitting up. “There’s a great breakfast place in town – come on.” He pecked Jay on the lips, and Jay forced them into a smile.

Adam fought his way out of the hammock, brushing imaginary dirt or pot smoke or the last two months off his shirt. He headed back across the lawn and opened the door to the house, a decision made.

When Jay rolled off, the joint winked at him, gleaming white in the sun at his feet – surrounded by burnt-out remnants of roaches, and the sparkle of several discarded flints.

He bent down to pick it up, slipping it into his pocket, before following Adam back into the house. His breath was shaky, but at least he could breathe again.

*

The breakfast place was more of an upscale diner, where a freshly showered, shaved and proverbially clean-smelling Adam in his crisp athletic gear slotted in perfectly with the clientele. Jay, a ragamuffin in borrowed clothes, was the stray who’d tagged along with him. He’d showered downstairs, while Adam showered upstairs – a fitting depiction of how they fit into a world outside a canopy of trees. That morning, Jay dug his phone and charger out of his duffel. Phones were a grudging necessity outside their hammock paradise.

Adam scarfed down the three complete breakfasts he’d ordered, as if he really did have the proverbial “munchies,” and Jay had coffee and toast and stole the orange slices off Adam’s many plates. Then Adam drove them out to a trail where they could go hiking.

After several days of relative inactivity, Jay’s legs forgot how to work and putting one in front of the other drained nearly all his stamina. Adam, on the other hand, was a ball of boundless, insatiable energy. But it was much easier to walk when you were living in a bubble where your feet never touched the ground.

“So, you’re done with smoking up? Just like that,” Jay said, through labored breath. The weight of his stolen joint sat heavily in his pocket.

Pink-cheeked and beaming, Adam stopped in the middle of the trail, allowing Jay to catch up with him.

“I told you, I don’t need to anymore.”

“It’s just … I’ve had a few buddies who tried to quit. It’s a habit, just like anything. You can’t really stop just ‘cause you feel like it,” Jay said.

Adam’s voice developed a familiar edge that usually appeared when someone dared to question his integrity. “Of course, I can. Because it’s not a habit – I just did it to feel good. It’s not like I’m addicted to it.”

Drug-addled Australian poetry and Adam’s red-rimmed eyes on Jay’s arrival said otherwise, but Jay tried to step lightly. “So, what’s so special about today?”

“I told you.” A crease vanished from Adam’s brow as quickly as it appeared. “Because being with you is a much better high. I finally figured out… it’s the reason why I came here.”

When Jay coughed to get his breath back, Adam assumed he was winded from the hike and not the pressure weighing down on his chest.

*

He drew in a deep breath when the car snaked its way up the street-long driveway, and he saw that comforting canopy of trees that silently shielded their world. The trees that hid the hammock in the backyard that was calling to him, and to them.

Jay opened his door and made a beeline for the brick path that would take him back to where everything made sense, but Adam’s voice stopped him.

“I keep forgetting to give you the tour of the house.”

Once upon a time, Jay wanted a tour of the house – back when he thought this would be a polite visit in a guest bedroom and not an open-ended stay, where they spent each day and night swapping bodily fluids and living in each other’s filth.

His chest kept contracting and he tried to force air out in tiny rasps. Pot-colored green and pink spots danced in front of his face.

“Yeah, all right,” he said, ideas flying through his head until he plucked the perfect one out of midair. “But … I think I need to shower again, if that’s cool.” He lifted his armpit and pantomimed being disgusted by the thin layer of sweat.

Adam nodded. “No, of course.” He paused. “Then I can show you around. Oh – or we could get out the board games. We have this room that overlooks the—”

“Sounds great,” Jay said. The spots morphed into blobs that completely obscured Adam’s face. Holding a conversation with green and pink pot-colored blobs would only be marginally stranger than a tour of Adam’s house at this point.

He covered his shallow, sharp breathing with a plastered-on smile as Adam disappeared up the stairs and Jay shut himself into the downstairs bathroom with the glass-walled shower.

At least the weight on his chest eased a fraction when he removed the joint from the pocket of Adam’s borrowed shorts. For as long as it took him to shower, he didn’t have to worry about keeping Adam’s head above water. He didn’t have to be Adam’s salvation that would take him away from the rain and the wind and the hour delay in his flight that cost him that last hour with his mother.

Jay tilted his head towards the sharp spray, the ample water pressure hitting him in the face. Then he turned the temperature dial up, the shower spitting near-scalding water at his body. A cold shower was so cliché – a hot shower that burned your face off was the real mood-killer.

Adam had placed his hopes and fears and secrets on him, unknowing or uncaring that Jay kept buckling from the weight. But just like that night, Adam had no one else to confide in. No one else to make him feel better. No one else that made him feel anything.

He turned off the shower and dried off with a big piece of fluffy fabric that was more blanket than towel. Through the steam in the bathroom, he spotted the joint that was rolled by an overachiever with a PhD in joint-rolling.

Jay picked it up, rolling it between his fingers. The sound of the upstairs shower still pitter-pattered through the walls when he cracked open the door of the bathroom and snuck out to the kitchen, hair still dripping wet, towel clutched around his waist. He tiptoed to the stove, resting his hand on the controls.

One flick of the wrist, and a blue flame shot up, where Jay held the joint for one second before switching it off. Heart pounding, he sprinted back to the closest room he could find with a door that shut and a window that opened. Placing it between his lips, he stuck his head out and took a deep breath. Then another. Then another, as he fanned the smoke away towards the backyard and the hammock and the outside and everywhere he wished they could be again.

Every breath made Adam’s expectations and hopes easier to take. The smoke curled under the weight atop his chest and lifted it, sending it up and into the canopy of trees.

Across the country, his mother’s disapproving expression flickered in his mind. But it grew fainter and fainter until it faded like the trail of smoke rising away from the house.

*

“At tribal council,” Adam kept saying – sweet words against Jay’s mouth.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“No, really, at tribal council …”

Jay cut him off, stealing the words from his lips. He pinned him to the bed, breathing in his shampoo-smelling hair. They were back on a bed – Adam’s bed – tangled together with wet hair, only there would be no helicopter to blow the roof off this house this time.

Though that wouldn’t be the worst thing. Then they could go back to the hammock, where they belonged.

“Yeah?” he said, laughing hotly into Adam’s neck. He lifted his head and drew the words out again. “What were you were saying?”

“I was saying, at tribal council …”

But Jay’s knee settled itself between Adam’s legs, and Adam’s hand was warm on Jay’s back and he sipped the words from Adam’s mouth and licked them onto his chest.

Then his hand dipped lower, to draw out more words, longer words, words that were no longer words, and swallow them all, because Adam’s mouth was wet, and Jay was parched.

*

Adam disappeared into the bathroom with damp shorts and a half-finished story and reappeared in a blink to snuggle back next to Jay on the bed. His cheeks were red and there was a smile in his clear eyes.

The weight had spread throughout Jay’s body, anchoring him down. The haze swirling around his lungs had dissipated into sleepiness. Blurry images danced in front of his face as he held Adam’s gaze.

“You wanna finish your story?” he said.

“What story?”

“You know … tribal council.”

“Oh, yeah.” His fingers moved through Jay’s hair, tingling and warm. “At tribal council,” he said, and Jay lifted his head.

He focused on Adam’s lips moving, focused on the words that were forming because they were important, and he needed to hear them.

“When I was trying to make fire, I looked up and I saw this … big gust of wind. It blew one of those palm leaves on this tree over Dave’s head, it just … knocked it further down. And I knew at that moment that I was gonna lose, because it gave him a little more cover during the storm, you know?”

Adam’s lips started melting together, and the words turned into nonsense noises. Jay blew out a laughing breath.

“Were you high?” he said, touching Adam’s face and nose and lips that were soft under his fingers.

“No – I just … knew. I could see it from outside myself. I sat there and just … watched it happen to me.”

Jay chuckled, and his finger trailed down to Adam’s chin. “You can see the future.”

“And you can see me.”

He laid back down next to Adam, half-listening to the tightness in Adam’s “I have a goal and I’m motivated” voice. Jay nodded, weightless, and murmured noises of approval to Adam’s latest inspirational speech.

“You’re the only one who knows me now,” Adam said.

Jay closed his eyes and Adam sang him a lullaby of “we can Skype” and “text all the time” and “I’ll come see you.” It was a vivid, sparkling tropical island of a dream where only they lived and breathed and were happy.

“Let’s just stay here,” Jay said.

“Okay.”

The weight was pinning him to the bed, his neck warm from Adam’s steady breathing next to him.

“Let’s stay here forever,” Adam said, before sleep carried Jay back to the hammock and the trees and the only place they ever belonged together.

*

His eyes blinked open, but Adam was still sleeping. The high was fading away into the harsh afternoon light when he pulled himself up, running a hand over his face.

Slowly, wisps of conversation played in his mind, where Adam had cast Jay as his escape – his helicopter in the rain storm.

_Let’s stay here forever._

In the hammock, maybe. In the hammock, under the canopy of trees, they could escape the world on their own deserted island full of pot and sex. But they would never fit into a world of house tours and hikes and public breakfasts.

Most of all, Jay knew now that he couldn’t be what healed Adam. Escape wasn’t healing, no matter how good it felt. Adam had to heal himself.

He slid to his feet, then walked over where Adam was still sleeping. Leaning over, his lips brushed Adam’s lips so faintly, it could’ve been a dream.

Jay found Danni’s number, and after a few texts to negotiate a rate off the app, she agreed to drive him back to the San Francisco airport. He hadn’t booked a ticket back but sleeping in the airport for several days was a more appealing prospect than getting a tour of a house where he didn’t fit, or a future without pleasure constructed out of a need to avoid pain.

It wouldn’t be a helicopter to rescue him, but a blue-gray meth car that wound its way up the driveway that resembled a street. He closed the door to the house softly behind him, with a last, lingering glance at the backyard. The scorch marks from Adam’s daily fires. All the discarded flints still glinting in the sunlight. The burnt-out stubs of joints hiding in the grass.

And another hammock on another island under a canopy of trees.

Danni said nothing when he got in the car, nothing when she backed the car down the driveway and the modern mansion with its wooden facade and its glass doors and the deck in the back grew smaller and smaller and smaller.

“No bags?” Danni asked.

Grunting, Jay put his earbuds on as a subtle hint.

“You and your someone special have fun?”

Jay snorted. Getting high and having sex and sleeping in a hammock probably wasn’t what she was envisioning. Neither was making fires and sharing half-told stories and lying about the future for three or five or however many days it had been since he first arrived.

“Yeah,” he said, and it was at least half-true.

As the meth-car bumped back down the road, away from the canopy of trees that shielded the whole street from the outside world, Adam’s voice ran through his head.

_I’ve done nothing but watch things happen to me._

With a sharp breath, Jay got out his phone. It wouldn’t be enough, he could never explain why he had to leave in a way that Adam would understand, but he could ensure that Adam couldn’t chalk this up to another twist of fate. His leaving Adam would not be another delayed flight, another overhanging leaf in the rainstorm:

_I left cuz I didnt want u to watch it happen_

Adam wasn’t the only one who could be a troll poet.

Then another promise stirred in his heart – the one he’d made back on that island, back in that first hammock. The secret he’d kept for Adam, holding his silence, his pain, letting it eat him from the inside and never speaking of it to another soul. He’d believed Adam when Adam said he would never speak to him again.

_If u cant forgive me I get it_

Jay sat back in his seat and closed his eyes.

And breathed.

*

When he got home, breathing wasn’t the problem. There was no weight on his chest anymore.

But Jay found his heart was torn in two. He wasn’t missing pieces, he had more pieces than he came with. For him, healing now resembled withdrawal: learning to function without Adam there every day.

It was learning how to have two parts of a heart. How to make a half-heart work like a whole heart when one half was still beating, and the other half was in stasis somewhere on some island near some part of the Pacific Ocean.

He hadn’t heard from Adam after he left – no texts or direct messages or poetry. Maybe Adam had made good on his promise, the promise he’d made back on another island, to never speak to Jay again.

*

A few months later, Adam’s secret spilled out about why he’d left the game so suddenly, but Jay had nothing to do with it. If there was a big social media announcement or even if Adam contacted everyone privately, he missed it. One minute, he was holding Adam’s secret safe, and the next, it trickled into tweets and posts of people he knew and didn’t know and had already forgotten.

That steady stream of information on social media, that flow of news that splashed across his cyber feeds turned into a deluge in person when they all gathered together back in California, back on a set that resembled an island to finally end this almost year-long journey.

The dam broke when Adam appeared, and nineteen other people swarmed around him, dripping with sentiment and sympathy and “Oh my gosh, I didn’t know” and “How are you feeling” and “You poor thing.”

That current carried Adam along from person to person. Jay was on the other side of the room – up on dry land, immune from the flood. He’d sought higher ground with Adam ages ago.

Jay was so busy studying the pattern and the direction of the tide of information swirling around the room that he missed the familiar “hey” when it surfaced behind him.

He turned around and Adam was a mirage standing in front of him.

“How you doing?” Adam said, with a shy smile that restarted the neglected part of Jay’s heart.

Jay grabbed him in a one-armed hug, and Adam didn’t disintegrate in his hold. Adam’s eyes were understandably red-rimmed, and his cheeks were understandably pale. He smelled and felt and looked the same.

He’d left Adam drowning, but Adam was swimming now through the ocean of sad faces surrounding him, as he hugged Jay back.

“I missed you,” Jay said. 

“It’s okay. I … I forgive you.”

Adam’s voice was steady when he recounted going back home to his family. How they were all healing each other. This was what was meant to happen. Adam would never have healed on their island, away from his real tribe. He had to gather his health and strength back from those who loved him.

“I’m gonna …” Adam reached in to hug him again, and Jay patted his back. “I’ll see you around?”

“Yeah. I’ll see ya.”

Adam turned and let the tide carry him away, back to the others with their outstretched arms and turned-down mouths and pitiful clucking. To be slowly drowned in a sea of sympathy-zombies.

Jay went to stand when a weight tugged at his chest. Frowning, his hand reflexively swept the pockets of his jacket … and produced a joint.

He concealed it before anyone else saw, and they threw him out for possession of drugs-and-or-drug-paraphernalia at the Survivor-finale-and-live-reunion-show. It certainly violated some obscure part of the ten-thousand-word contract he’d signed. He glanced at Adam, who found his gaze. Those same red-rimmed eyes and pale cheeks had stared back at him from the hammock. How many times had he found those eyes before he leaned in and …

Adam gave him the faintest hint of a nod before walking through the parted crowd of people and out the door. A producer gave him a solemn nod. Nobody would say no to Adam today.

Jay’s pocket was heavy, and Adam had left. He was expecting Jay somewhere. Adam would find him, or he’d find Adam, or they’d find each other.

He could make his way out of the room under some garbage excuse. He could meet Adam down whatever dark corridor he’d uncovered in the CBS studio. Adam would produce his Survivor lighter and they could share the joint, passing it back and forth – blowing smoke into each other’s mouths before they kissed and clung to each other and their wandering hands found each other, rediscovering what it meant to break apart and heal, and break apart and heal.

Or he could not show up and send Adam a message that they needed to move on. That Jay couldn’t help Adam rot his brain and destroy himself. Adam’s family would want him to do that. His family would want him to stay put and be the bad guy and force Adam back into their loving, healing arms.

Jay tossed the joint into a trash can.

Two minutes later, he glanced around the room, hoping nobody would notice him digging through the trash to fish it out and slip it back into his pocket.

He removed it and twirled it between his fingers, just as Adam did so many times beneath a canopy of trees. He stared at it, wanting to do the right thing for Adam and for himself. Whatever that was.

Back and forth, it rolled between his fingers. Like the sway of a hammock … back and forth.

The End.

**Author's Note:**

> For N. and K., neither of whom asked for this.
> 
> Thank you for reading. :)


End file.
